The Brothers Karamazov - a quick note

The last time I wrote about The Brothers Karamazov, I complained about the book being long-winded. I'd been reading Constance Garnett’s translation at the time. Thanks to Chandrahas' suggestion, I used the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation for the remaining two thirds of the book. And how the pages flew by! The Brothers Karamazov is now undoubtedly one of my all time favorites.

In the introduction, Richard Pevear claims to have kept Dostoevsky’s idiosyncrasies of prose intact so as to retain the humor. TBK may be considered a dark, tragic book, and sure it is that, but it is also exceptionally funny, so much that I burst out laughing in the most unexpected places, even when such serious matters as parricide were involved.

TBK is also, I feel, a spiritual book in many ways, and I’d like to retain the book’s intensity – its unrelenting questions about sin, conscience, loving and forgiving – as long as I can. I’ll try to write about my interpretation of the book’s themes in a longer post. For the moment, though, a couple of earlier posts on Dostoevsky: 1 and 2.